We are left to examine the results of the elections in the most important curia—the workers' curia.

That this curia was on the side of the S.D.s was beyond doubt for anyone. The struggle here was no longer waged against the Populists: among them no resistance was found to Populist liquidationism ("Positive Direction"{175} in Paris and the Esser elements in Petersburg), and to Populist boycottism, and this absence of resistance to decadent tendencies made the Left Populists a cipher.

The struggle in the workers' curia was waged only between Marxists and liberal workers' politicians—liquidators. The Marxists declared directly and clearly, openly and without contemptible evasions, in January 1912 that agreements in the workers' curia (and only in it) with the wreckers of the workers' party were impermissible[46].

This is a well-known fact. It is equally well-known that the August conference of liquidators was itself called "pathetic" and liquidationist even by Plekhanov the reconciler (contrary to the oaths of "Our Dawn") and its resolutions "diplomacy"—or, to speak more plainly, deception.

What then did the electoral results show?

Did they or did they not provide objective material on the question of what relation existed between the January and August declarations and reality? Whom did the elected representatives of the working class stand with?

There exists the most precise statistical material on this, which the liquidators strive (in vain!) to obscure, to conceal, to drown out with shouts and abuse.

Beginning with the Second Duma (the majority of S.D.s boycotted the first), there exists an exact count of Duma deputies from the workers' curia, distributed among the different "trends" in the S.D. party. Here are these data:

Deputies to the State Duma elected from the workers' curia:

These figures speak for themselves!

In 1907 the party had a Bolshevik majority, officially counted (105 Bolshevik delegates and 97 Menshevik delegates). Consequently, 47% in the workers' curia (in the entire faction there were 18 B. + 36 M. = 54) constituted about 52% in the workers' party.

In 1912 for the first time all six curial deputies were Bolsheviks. It is known that these 6 gubernias are the main industrial gubernias. It is known that in them is concentrated an incomparably larger part of the proletariat than in other gubernias. It is understandable therefore—and fully proven by comparison with 1907—that 67% in the workers' curia means over 70% in the workers' party.

During the period of the Third Duma, when the intelligentsia fled from the workers' party, and the liquidators justified this, the workers fled from the liquidators. The flight of the liquidator Belousov from the S.D. faction of the Third Duma{176} and the turn of that entire faction (three-quarters Menshevik) from Menshevism to anti-liquidationism[47] were symptoms and faithful indicators that the same process was occurring in the workers' milieu. And the elections to the Fourth Duma proved this.

In "Our Dawn" Oskarov, Martov, Cherevarin, Levitsky and so forth are incredibly furious about this, hurling hundreds of the most Purish­kevich-like "compliments" at what they claim is a sectarian, allegedly Leninist, allegedly clique.

A fine clique and fine sectarianism it is, on whose side stands the steady growth of the workers' curia from 1908–1912 down to 67% of this curia in the Fourth Duma! Clumsy polemicists—these liquidators. They curse us to high heaven, and the result is the finest compliment to us.

To settle disputed questions by an abundance of shouting, abuse, and groundless assertions—this is the usual manner precisely of intellectual cliques. Workers prefer something else: objective data. And in Russia, given its present political situation, there can be no other objective measure of the strength and influence of one trend or another in the workers' masses than the workers' press and the workers' curia of the Duma.

Therefore, gentlemen liquidators, the more you make noise and quarrel in "Our Dawn" and "The Ray," the more calmly shall we put the question to the workers: point out another objective criterion for connection with the masses besides the workers' press and the workers' curia in the Duma.

Let the readers, who are deafened by cries about the "sectarian" "Lenin clique" and so forth, think calmly about these objective data concerning the workers' press and the workers' curia in the Duma. These objective data show that the liquidators are shouting in order to cover up their complete defeat.

But it is particularly instructive to compare the emergence of "The Ray"—which appeared on the day of the elections thanks to private initiative—and the emergence of "Pravda." The April wave of the workers' movement—one of the greatest, historic waves of mass workers' movement in Russia. Hundreds of thousands of workers, according to even the factory owners' calculations, participated in this movement. And this movement itself, as a byproduct, created "Pravda"—first by strengthening "The Star," making it biweekly instead of weekly, then by raising workers' collections for "Pravda" to 76 in March and to 227 in April (counting only collective workers' collections).

Before us lies one of the classical examples of how a movement, entirely foreign to reformist character, as a byproduct produces either reforms, or concessions, or expansion of limits, and so forth.

Reformists commit betrayal in relation to the workers' movement when they place reformist slogans before its great scale (as our liquidators do). Opponents of reformism, on the other hand, prove themselves not only faithful to the uncompromised slogans of the proletariat, they also prove themselves to be the better "practitioners": it is precisely the broad scale, precisely the uncompromised slogans that ensure the force which produces as a byproduct either a concession, or a reform, or an expansion of limits, or at least a temporary necessity for the upper classes to tolerate an unwelcome stirring of the lower.

While the liquidators in 1908–1912 were cursing the "underground," justifying "flight" from it, babbling about an "open party"—the entire workers' curia departed from them, and they failed to utilize the first and great upsurge of the April-May wave!

Mr. Martov in "Our Dawn" acknowledges this circumstance, sad for him, by clothing the acknowledgement in a particularly amusing form. He curses and acknowledges as zeros the groups of the Plekhanovists and the Vperiodists, whom the liquidators themselves had yesterday represented as "centers" and trends, contrary to our demand to reckon only with Russian organizations. And Martov acknowledges with bitterness, with malice, with an abyss of venomous (Burenin-venomous) little words, that-de the "Leninist" "sectarian clique" has "held firm" and "even goes over to the offensive," "having established itself in arenas that have nothing whatever to do with the underground" ("Our Dawn," cited ed., p. 74).

But all this acknowledgement by Martov provokes a smile. Human nature is such that when the enemy makes a mistake, we gloat—and when he takes a correct step, we sometimes become childishly angry.

Thank you for the compliment you were forced to bestow upon us, liberal liquidator! Since the end of 1908 we have insisted on the utilization of open forms of movement, in the spring of 1909 we broke with a number of comrades{177} over this. And if in these "arenas" we proved to be a force, it is only because we did not sacrifice spirit for the sake of form. In order to utilize the form in time, in order to seize the April upsurge, in order to gain the precious sympathy of the workers' curia that the Marxist values—it was necessary not to renounce the old, not to relate to it in a renegade manner, but to defend firmly its ideas, its traditions, its material substrates. It was precisely these ideas that permeated the April upsurge, precisely they that predominated in the workers' curia of 1912, and only those who remained faithful to them on all arenas and in all forms could keep pace with both this upsurge and this curia.

"Enlightenment" No. 1, January 1913. Signature: V. Ilyin

Printed according to the text of the journal "Enlightenment"